Go! Cooperative
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| Overview | |
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| Main route(s) | Somerset |
| Other route(s) | None |
| Website | www.go-op.coop |
| Andover to Ludgershall - proposed route diagram | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Go-Op (full name Go! Cooperative Ltd), is an open access train operating company which is currently proposing to operate a service between Taunton and Swindon, via Westbury. It aims to become the first cooperatively owned train operating company in the United Kingdom, to improve access to the public transport infrastructure through open access rail services linking main lines to smaller market towns, and co-ordinating services with light rail and bus links and car pools. Go-Op intended to begin operating rail services in the spring of 2014, however difficulties in obtaining rolling stock and severe financial difficulties incurred by their main partner The Co-operative Bank have delayed these plans.
As a co-operative, Go-Op is to be owned and run by its employees and customers. Shares are available to the general public, with holdings restricted to between £500 and £20,000 per shareholder. Passengers hold 50 per cent of the vote in general meetings, with employees holding a further 25 per cent, and other investors holding the remainder.
The company created a draft timetable, which offered four return trips between Yeovil Junction and the Midlands, via Yeovil Pen Mill, Castle Cary, Frome, Westbury, Trowbridge, Melksham, Chippenham, Swindon and Oxford, with three of those services being extended to Birmingham Moor Street. The timetable proposed an early morning service from Yeovil to Birmingham, catering for business travellers, followed by a commuter service from Westbury and Trowbridge to Swindon and Oxford. Later services to Birmingham would cater for the leisure market. There were plans to extend the route further south to Weymouth, however it was acknowledged that for this to happen extra trains would be required. Go-Op estimated that around 750,000 people live within 2 km of stations on the proposed route, excluding Birmingham.
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